The Luzhin Defense

by Vladimir Nabokov

  And it was necessary to hurry. At any minute these chess growths might ring him in again. For the time being he was surrounded by twilight murk, thick, cotton-wool air. He asked a ghost slipping by how to get to the manor. The ghost did not understand and passed on. "One moment," said Luzhin, but it was already too late. Then, swinging his short arms, he quickened his step. A pale light sailed past and disintegrated with a mournful rustle. It was difficult, difficult to find one's way home in this yielding fog. Luzhin felt he should keep left, and then there would be a big wood, and once in the wood he would easily find the path. Another shadow slipped by. "Where's the wood, the wood?" Luzhin asked insistently, and since this word evoked no reply he cast around for a synonym: "Forest? Wald?" he muttered. "Park?" he added indulgently. Then the shadow pointed to the left and disappeared from view. Upbraiding himself for his slowness, anticipating pursuit at any minute, Luzhin strode off in the direction indicated. And indeed--he was suddenly surrounded by trees, ferns crepitated underfoot, it was quiet and damp. He sank down heavily on the ground and squatted there for he was quite out of breath, and tears poured down his face. Presently he got up, removed a wet leaf from his knee and after wandering among tree trunks for a short time he found the familiar footpath. "Marsch, marsch," Luzhin kept repeating, urging himself on as he walked over the sticky ground. He had already come halfway. Soon there would be the river, and the sawmill, and then the manor house would peep through the bare bushes. He would hide there and would live on the contents of large and small glass jars. The mysterious pursuit had been left far behind. You wouldn't catch him now. Oh no. If only it were easier to breathe, and one could get rid of this pain in the temples, this numbing pain.... The path twisted through the wood and came out onto a transverse road, while farther on a river glinted in the darkness. He also saw a bridge and a dim pile of structures on the other side of it, and at first, for one moment, it seemed to him that over there against the dark sky was the familiar triangular roof of the manor with its black lightning conductor. But immediately he realized that this was some subtle ruse on the part of the chess gods, for the parapet of the bridge produced the rain-glistening, trembling shapes of great female figures and a queer reflection danced on the river. He walked along the bank, trying to find another bridge, the bridge where you sink up to your ankles in sawdust. He looked for a long time and finally, quite out of the way, he found a narrow, quiet little bridge and thought that here at least he could cross peacefully. But on the other bank everything was unfamiliar, lights flashed past and shadows slid by. He knew the manor was somewhere here, close by, but he was approaching it from an unfamiliar angle and how difficult everything was.... His legs from hips to heels were tightly filled with lead, the way the base of a chessman is weighted. Gradually the lights disappeared, the phantoms grew sparser, and a wave of oppressive blackness washed over him. By the light of a last reflection he made out a front garden and a couple of round bushes, and it seemed to him he recognized the miller's house. He stretched out a hand to the fence but at this point triumphant pain began to overwhelm him, pressing down from above on his skull, and it was as if he were becoming flatter and flatter, and then he soundlessly dissipated.

  9

  The sidewalk skidded, reared up at a right angle and swayed back again. Gunther straightened himself up, breathing heavily, while his comrade, supporting him and also swaying, kept repeating: "Gunther, Gunther, try to walk." Gunther stood up quite straight and after this brief stop, which was not the first, both of them continued farther along the deserted night street, which alternately rose up smoothly to the stars and then sloped down again. Gunther, a big sturdy fellow, had drunk more than his comrade: the latter, Kurt by name, supported Gunther as best he could, although the beer was throbbing thunderously in his head. "Where are ... where are ..." Gunther strove to ask. "Where are the others?" A moment before they had all been sitting around an oaken table, thirty fellows or so, happy, level-headed, hard-working men celebrating the fifth anniversary of their leaving school with a good sing and the sonorous ringing of clinked glasses--whereas now, as soon as they had started to disperse to their homes, they found themselves beset by nausea, darkness, and the hopeless unsteadiness of this sidewalk. "The others are there," said Kurt with a broad gesture, which unpleasantly called into life the nearest wall: it leaned forward and slowly straightened up again. "They've gone, gone," elucidated Kurt sadly. "But Karl is in front of us," said Gunther slowly and distinctly, and a resilient, beery wind caused them both to sway to one side: they halted, took a step backwards and again went on their way. "I'm telling you Karl is there," repeated Gunther sulkily. And truly a man was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his head lowered. They miscalculated their impetus and were carried past. When they succeeded in approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them. Yes, it was Karl, but what a Karl--his face blank, his eyes glazed! "I'm just taking a rest," he said in a dull voice. "I'll continue in a minute." Suddenly a taxi with its flag up came rolling slowly over the deserted asphalt. "Stop him," said Karl. "I want him to take me." The car drew up. Gunther kept tumbling over Karl, trying to help him get up, and Kurt tugged at somebody's gray-spatted foot. From his seat the driver encouraged all this good-naturedly and then climbed out and also began to help. The limply floundering body was squeezed through the aperture of the door and the car immediately pulled away. "And we're nearly there," said Kurt. The figure standing next to him sighed and Kurt, looking at him, saw that it was Karl--which meant that the taxi had carried off Gunther instead. "I'll give you a hand," he said guiltily. "Let's go." Looking in front of him with empty, childlike eyes, Karl leaned toward him and they both moved off and started to cross to the other side of the heaving asphalt. "Here's another," said Kurt. A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the sidewalk, beside a garden fence. "That's probably Pulvermacher," muttered Kurt. "You know he's changed an awful lot in recent years." "That's not Pulvermacher," replied Karl, sitting down on the sidewalk beside him. "Pulvermacher's bald." "It doesn't matter," said Kurt. "He also has to be taken home." They tried to raise the man by his shoulders and lost their equilibrium. "Don't break the fence," cautioned Karl. "He has to be taken," repeated Kurt. "Perhaps it's Pulvermacher's brother. He was there, too."

  The man was evidently sound asleep. He was wearing a black overcoat with strips of velvet on the lapels. His fat face with its heavy chin and convex eyelids was glossy in the light of the streetlamp. "Let's wait for a taxi," said Kurt and followed the example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing. "This night will come to an end," he said confidently and added, looking at the sky: "How they revolve." "Stars," explained Karl and both sat still, staring upward at the wonderful, pale, nebulous abyss, where the stars flowed in an arc. "Pulvermacher's also looking," said Kurt after a silence. "No, he's sleeping," objected Karl, glancing at the fat, motionless face. "Sleeping," agreed Kurt.

  A light glided over the asphalt and the same good-natured taxi that had taken Gunther away somewhere, softly pulled in alongside the sidewalk. "Another one?" laughed the driver. "They could have gone together." "But where?" Karl asked Kurt sleepily. "There must be an address of some kind--let's look in his pockets ..." the latter answered vaguely. Swaying and involuntarily nodding, they bent over the motionless man and the fact that his overcoat was unbuttoned facilitated their further explorations. "Velvet waistcoat," said Kurt. "Poor fellow, poor fellow ..." In the very first pocket they found a postcard folded in two, which parted in their hands, and one half with the receiver's address on it slipped down and vanished without trace. On the remaining half, however, they found another address that had been written across the card and thickly underlined. On the other side there was just a single level line, cut short at the left; but even if it had been possible to place it side by side with the fallen-off and lost half the meaning of this line would hardly have become any clearer. "Bac berepom," read Kurt mistaking the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable. The address found
on the postcard was told to the driver and then they had to thrust the heavy, lifeless body into the car, and again the driver came to their aid. On the door large chess squares--the blazon of Berlin taxis--showed in the light of the streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off.

  Karl fell asleep on the way. His body and the unknown's body and the body of Kurt, who was sitting on the floor, came into soft, involuntary contact at every turn and subsequently Kurt finished up on the seat and Karl and most of the unknown fellow on the floor. When the car stopped and the driver opened the door he was unable at first to make out how many people were inside. Karl woke up immediately, but the hatless man was as motionless as before. "I'm curious to know what you'll do with your friend now," said the driver. "They're probably waiting for him," said Kurt. The driver, considering he had done his job and carried enough heavyweights for the night, raised his flag and announced the fare. "I'll pay," said Karl. "No, I will," said Kurt. "I found him first." This argument convinced Karl. The car was emptied with difficulty, and departed. Three people remained on the sidewalk: one of them lying with his head resting against a stone step.

  Swaying and sighing, Kurt and Karl moved to the middle of the street and then, addressing themselves to the sole lighted window in the house, shouted hoarsely, and immediately, with unexpected responsiveness, the light-slashed blind trembled and was pulled up. A young woman looked out of the window. Not knowing how to begin, Kurt smirked, then, pulling himself together, said boldly and loudly: "Miss, we've brought Pulvermacher." The woman gave no answer and the blind descended with a rattle. One could see, however, that she stayed by the window. "We found him in the street," said Karl uncertainly, addressing the window. The blind went up again. "A velvet waistcoat," Kurt considered it necessary to explain. The window emptied, but a moment later the darkness behind the front door disintegrated and through the glass appeared an illuminated staircase, marble as far as the first landing, and this newborn staircase had not had time to congeal completely before swift feminine legs appeared on the stairs. A key grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the steps lay a stout man in black.

  Meanwhile the staircase continued to spawn people.... A gentleman appeared wearing bedroom slippers, black trousers and a collarless starched shirt, and behind him came a pale, stocky maid with scuffers on her bare feet. Everybody bent over Luzhin, and the guiltily grinning, completely drunk strangers kept explaining something, while one of them insistently proffered half a postcard, like a visiting card. The five of them carried Luzhin up the stairs and his fiancee, supporting the heavy, precious head, let out a cry when the light over the staircase suddenly went out. In the darkness everything swung, there was a knocking and a shuffling and a puffing, someone took a step backwards and invoked God's name in German, and when the light came on again one of the strangers was sitting on a stair and the other was being crushed by Luzhin's body, while higher up, on the landing, stood Mother in a gaudily embroidered robe, surveying with bright prominent eyes the lifeless body that her husband, groaning and muttering, was supporting, and the large awful head that lay on her daughter's shoulder. They carried Luzhin into the drawing room. The young strangers clicked their heels, trying to introduce themselves to someone, and shied away from the little tables laden with porcelain. They were seen at once in all the rooms. No doubt they wanted to leave but were unable to make it to the front hall. They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them. Their number was unclear--a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they disappeared, and the maid said that she had let two of them out and that the rest must still be sprawling around somewhere, and that drunkenness ruins a man, and that her sister's fiance also drank.

  "Congratulations, he's pickled," said the mistress of the house, looking at Luzhin, who was lying like a corpse, half-undressed and covered with a laprobe, on a couch in the drawing room. "Congratulations." And strange thing: the fact that Luzhin was drunk pleased her, evoked a warm sentiment with regard to Luzhin. In such revelry she detected something human and natural, and even a certain daring, a breadth of spirit. This was a situation in which people she knew found themselves, good people, merry people. (And why not, she reasoned, these troubled times knock one off balance so no wonder our Russian lads turn to drink, the green dragon and comforter, from time to time....) But when it turned out there was no smell of vodka or wine coming from Luzhin, and he was sleeping queerly, not at all like a drunken man, she was disappointed and chided herself for being able to presuppose a single natural inclination in Luzhin. While the doctor, who came at dawn, was examining him, a change occurred in Luzhin's face, his eyelids lifted and dim eyes looked out from beneath them. And only then did his fiancee come out of that numbness of the soul that had possessed her ever since she saw the body lying by the front steps. It is true she had been expecting something terrible, but this precise horror had been beyond her imagination. Last night when Luzhin had not visited them as usual she had called the chess cafe and been told that play had finished long ago. Then she called the hotel and they replied that Luzhin had still not returned. She went out onto the street, thinking that perhaps Luzhin was waiting by the locked door, and then called the hotel again, and then consulted her father about notifying the police. "Nonsense," her father said decisively. "There must be plenty of friends of his around. The man's gone to a party." But she knew perfectly well that Luzhin had no friends and that there was something senseless about his absence.

  And now, looking at Luzhin's large, pale face, she so brimmed with aching, tender pity that it seemed as if without this pity inside her there would be no life either. It was impossible to think of this inoffensive man sprawling in the street and his soft body being handled by drunks; she could not bear to think that everybody had taken his mysterious swoon for the flabby, vulgar sleep of a reveler and had expected a devil-may-care snore from his helpless quietude. Such pity, such pain. And this outmoded, eccentric waistcoat that one could not bear to look at without tears, and that poor curl, and the bare, white neck all creased like a child's.... And all this had happened because of her ... she had not kept an eye on him, had not kept an eye on him. She should have stayed by him the whole time, not allowed him to play too much ... and how was it he had not been run over yet by a car, and why had she not guessed that at any minute he might topple over, paralyzed by this chess fatigue? ... "Luzhin," she said smiling, as if he could see her smile. "Luzhin, everything's all right. Luzhin, do you hear me?"